Trying to Sort out the Numbers on Wisconsin

One of the claims being made about Wisconsin is that it represents a lesson about how money, post Citizens United, is now purchasing elections. That seems like a potentially serious concern no matter where you sit: even if you're entirely sanguine about the effect of money on elections (taking fundraising capacity as a sort of proxy for competence), it makes it hard to draw lessons for the November race because the Romney/Obama contest likely will be on fairly even terms.

However, looking around at the numbers being floated today, I'm not sure what lesson to draw. Here are some things being reported:

1) $63.5M total was spent on the elections, with $22M coming from outside superPACs. Union money amounted to around $5.5M, although the wording of the story makes the precise figure a little unclear. There was an eight-to-one advantage for the Republican candidate for governor over the Democrat.

2) Big Labor spent $21M on the elections. Democrats and their backers spent $23.4M, with "outside groups" who were against Republicans spending $18.6M. I'm not clear from the wording here whether that 18.6M is out of the $23.4, or additional.

3) $44M total was spent on the elections, with Democrats outspending Republicans $23.4M to $20.5M. There was a Democratic advantage even on outside spending, with outside Democrat-leaning money coming to $18.6M to Republican outsiders $15.9M.

There's a big difference in the lessons to learn here, depending on whether story 1 is correct, or story 3 is correct. Story 2 shares some figures with story 3, but that may be simply because they are sharing sources. Until we know what number set is correct, it's hard to judge what the lesson is. It could vary from "having more money is the main thing" to "having more money didn't help."

11 comments:

Gringo
said...

The amount of money spent is definitely subject to debate. A number of Barrett supporters were claiming that the Walker/Barrett money spent was $34 million versus $4 million, which doesn't sound believable to me. After all, Big Labor has some resources. But they believe it. The money that was spent on the Recall Petitioning and the primaries should also be taken into account.

Well, it's on them if they learn the wrong lesson from it. If what they take away is that they only lost because of a vast spending advantage, they won't make the necessary course corrections to offer a better pitch at the ballot box next time. If they realize that the spending was a lot closer, they'll learn a different lesson. If they realize (as may be the case) that they actually out-spent the Republicans, it's a different lesson still.

It doesn't look like there was a vast Republican advantage in spending; but there may have been one, or none particularly, or even a deficit. Anyone trying to map out lessons-learned from this encounter needs to know which it was.

The primary assumption is that lessons will be learned. Depending on the students, I'm not sure I'd bet they would.

WRT the three different stories, I'm left with the recollection of another piece of advice pappy use to share. Believe none of what you hear, and only a reasonable amount of what you see, after reflecting on what you saw for a good while...

I'd also be interested in what those numbers are relative to the coffers available. How much, for instance, do those $5.5M in union money or $21M in Big Labor money represent compared to the money unions and Big Labor had/have available to spend? There'd be an important lesson there if the unions/BL had gone all in and still lost. Especially for the reform side, as reformers work to curtail union/labor access to non-union employees' money.

Though that lesson would be closely allied with the lesson that money talks.

The MacIver institute has a nice chart of the path of Big Labor's money into the election (in many cases through PACs or campaigns), and where it was targeted. Some of the numbers you're mentioning may only include money spent on targeting Walker, some may include money spent targeting all the recall candidates, so it could be more confusing still. I suppose if there were still any real reporters out there, we'd eventually find out. All we seem to have now are propagandists.

I should add that I really have no idea who the MacIver institute are, or how reliable they are, but the details of the chart at least indicate a depth of information that looks like there was actual research behind it.

MacIver is solid. Conservative, but they don't make stuff up. The figures are largely gleaned from Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board (the agency which oversees elections, contributions, etc.)

Walker DID have more money than Barrett--but then, Barrett ran a contested primary, and some (D) money was given to his opponent, Ms. Falk.